


teeth

by cibmata



Series: live fast / die young [1]
Category: The Creatures | Cow Chop RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, Drabble, Fake Chop, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-20
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-08-04 16:32:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16350182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cibmata/pseuds/cibmata
Summary: Brett gets shot. Aleks overreacts.





	teeth

**Author's Note:**

> for the prompt _things you said through your teeth_
> 
> sort of edited?? by myself anyway it's still a bit of a mess
> 
> set in gta au ofc, but a version where fake chops origins are basically... brett running an autobody/chop shop, being involved w street racing, and then somehow collecting a bunch of street kids who end up making up the chop crew. eventually they're recruited by the fakes because of course the fakes run everything
> 
> ft aleks having a rough time with the concept of change, probably
> 
>  
> 
> for shay!!! my muse my sp7/cc buddy ride or die champion

Aleks is angry, but that’s nothing new.

They make it back to the warehouse no problem. Lindsey’s driving, for once, a little too slow for anyone else’s liking. Trevor is shaken but uninjured. James and Aleks are both spattered in blood that doesn’t belong to them.

Most of it is Brett’s blood. Which is a little bit new.

It’s just a bullet wound — not even a very serious one, just someone’s lucky shot that had caught him in the shoulder right where his Kevlar had ended. Brett’s had worse. They’ve all had worse. It barely even hurts, he keeps telling them.

“That’s the sixth time you’ve said that,” Aleks snaps as they finally stop, as they all heave Brett out of the van. “If it wasn’t bothering you, you would have shut up by now.”

Brett’s feeling woozy, and therefore amiable. He shuts up.

Trevor shuffles anxiously around the edge of the room as Jakob delicately digs out the bullet. Aleks is grinding his teeth, arms crossed in front of his chest near the door. James had fucked off somewhere the second they’d walked in the door and Lindsey is trying to get everyone else to leave, to let Jakob do his work.

If Brett weren’t feeling so slow and sleepy he thinks he’d crack a joke. It’s fucking awkward, this silence.

Conveniently, he doesn’t have to break it himself.

“You’re not working fucking fast enough,” Aleks grits out, pushing away from the wall so quickly that they all jump and Jakob nearly stabs Brett in the ear with the suture needle. “Fucking give me that. And get out.”

No one moves as Aleks strides across the room. He snaps on a pair of gloves, like he’s on autopilot, and when Jakob doesn’t hand over the needle he snatches it out of his hands anyway.

“I said get _out_.”

For once in their lives, everyone listens.

Brett smiles dizzily up at Aleks once they’ve all gone. “Want me to get out too?”

Aleks doesn’t respond. Just silently picks up where Jakob left off. He’s a lot less gentle than Jakob is, but his hands are steadier even if Brett can see the tension in his jaw. The tremble in his mouth.

They sit in silence. Aleks adds another painful but efficient stitch.

After a beat; “you’ve lost a ton of fucking blood,” he says. He won’t meet Brett’s eyes and he’s sort of hissing his words, forcing them out through his teeth.

“It really doesn’t hurt,” Brett tries, and Aleks jabs the needle in unnecessarily hard. “Ow.”

“Just because it doesn’t hurt doesn’t mean it’s not fucking-,”

Aleks cuts himself off sharply as he pulls the final stitch through Brett’s skin and ties it off.

“We’ve all had worse,” Brett says in what he thinks is a reasonable way.

Aleks spits something in Russian, less tight than he’d spoken in English but just as angry. He tosses the suture needle onto the table, strips off his gloves and tosses those aside too as he turns to go.

Brett, uncharacteristically, reaches out to stop him before he can run off.

Normally he’d let him go to James to let off some steam. That’s what they do — they fight or they fuck until Aleks isn’t burning quite so violently, until the rage baking in his chest and crackling in his gut subsides some. It’s what they’ve always done, and Brett always lets him go.

He reaches out, though, with his good arm. Catches Aleks by the hip and tugs him gently back.

Aleks immediately folds and cracks and very abruptly Brett has a lapful of shaking _boy_.

He shakes and clings and his legs bracket Brett’s thighs, fingers twisting in the front of Brett’s undershirt. He's not heavy. He’s nowhere near as big as Brett is, but like this it's easy to see how he’s so much bigger now than when Brett had first caught him trying to hotwire a car right of the Chop garage. No longer a skinny street kid, but a man.

Something like pride swells up in Brett’s chest, then pulls and settles like a tide as Aleks pushes his face into his uninjured shoulder.

“It doesn’t fucking matter if one of _us_ dies, you fucking dickhead,” Aleks hisses, muffled and miserable but still so, so angry. “But you’re - you’re our fucking, like, leader. You’re like our d-,”

He cuts himself off again, takes a breath that shakes like it wants to be a sob. He’s not crying, but Brett thinks he might start soon.

Very gently, he rubs his palm in slow circles between Aleks’ shoulder blades. He understands, now. He knows this isn’t just about him. It’s about them _all_ having been injured at least once in the last month. About too many close calls and about how Trevor keeps talking about leaving and getting out of this shitty, violent life. About how Jakob shakes all the time, now, won’t go on runs with them anymore, won’t even get in a car most days. About how James has become more distant — and that’s Brett’s fault, because him and Lindsey can’t do everything themselves anymore and James is the next oldest and —

This isn’t just about him.

“We all matter,” Brett says, careful and measured even though he feels a little like he’s underwater, hazy and slow. “We couldn’t go on if any of us died.”

Aleks goes tense, fingers tightening into fists in Brett’s blood-stained tank.

“But none of us have died,” Brett says before Aleks can interrupt. “And we’re not _going_ to, Aleks, we have each other’s backs.”

The silence between them is heavy, broken by Aleks’ still-wet breathing. Brett pulls him in a little tighter, ignores the twinge in his other shoulder.

“We’re a family, dude, I’m not going to let any of you die. And I need to be alive to do that.”

Slowly, Aleks’ shoulders sink down and down, easing away from where they’d been heaved up tight around his ears. His grip doesn’t loosen on Brett’s tank.

Brett kisses the side of his head and keeps rubbing his back, as soothing as he can manage.

“I’m gonna fucking hold you to that,” Aleks says, finally, voice shaking. There’s a bit of wetness now where his face is still pressed to Brett’s shoulder. “If you die-,”

“You’ll kill me?”

Aleks laughs this time, small and dark. His boots dig into Brett’s knees.

“Yeah,” he mutters. “Something like that.”

And then very suddenly he’s gone, the warm weight of him lifting from Brett’s thighs. He’s through the door, running off down the hall before Brett can even think to say anything else.

Brett watches him go and he wonders, dimly, what _something like that_ means. 

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me @cibmata on twitter and tumblr


End file.
